This volume completes the documentation of the planning, design, and construction of the Getty Center begun in The Getty Center
(1991). Designed by Richard Meier and Partners, the Getty Center sits
atop a stunning 110-acre hilltop in west Los Angeles and is the new home
for the Museum, the five Institutes, and the Grant Program that make up
the J. Paul Getty Trust.

The book includes a series of
essays that underscore the challenges faced by architect, contractor,
and owner working collaboratively. A chronology identifies the key
dates and events in the design and construction process. Extensively
illustrated with photographs by several accomplished photographers, site
drawings from Richard Meier and Partners, and Robert Irwin's drawings
of the Central Gardens, the book presents readers with an insider's view
of the making of the Getty Center.

The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for the J. Paul Getty Trust founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997,[2]
is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking
Los Angeles. The center sits atop a hill connected to a visitors'
parking garage at the bottom of the hill by a three-car, cable-pulled
tram. The center draws 1.3 million visitors annually.
It is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
This branch of the museum specializes in "pre-20th-century European
paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative
arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs".[3] Among the works on display is the painting Irises by Vincent van Gogh. Besides the museum, the center's buildings house the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the administrative offices of the J. Paul Getty Trust,
which owns and operates the center. The center also has outdoor
sculptures displayed on terraces and in gardens. Designed by architect Richard Meier, the campus includes a central garden designed by artist Robert Irwin.
GRI's separate building contains a research library with over 900,000
volumes and two million photographs of art and architecture. The
center's design included special provisions to address concerns
regarding earthquakes and fires.

Location and history

USGS
satellite image of the Getty Center. The circular building to the left
is the Getty Research Institute. The two buildings at the top are the
Getty Trust administrative offices and the rest is the museum.

Originally, the Getty Museum started in J. Paul Getty's house located in Pacific Palisades
in 1954. He expanded the house with a museum wing. In the 1970s, Getty
built a replica of an Italian villa on his home's property to better
house his collection, which opened in 1974. After Getty's death in 1976,
the entire property was turned over to the Getty Trust for museum
purposes. However, the collection outgrew the site, which has since been
renamed the Getty Villa,
and management sought a location more accessible to Los Angeles. The
purchase of the land upon which the center is located, a campus of 24
acres (9.7 ha) on a 110-acre (45 ha) site in the Santa Monica Mountains above Interstate 405, surrounded by 600 acres (240 ha) kept in a natural state, was announced in 1983.[4] The site cost $25 million.[5]
The top of the hill is 900 feet (270 m) above I-405, high enough that
on a clear day it is possible to see not only the Los Angeles skyline
but also the San Bernardino Mountains and San Gabriel Mountains to the east as well as the Pacific Ocean to the west.[6][7]
In 1984, Richard Meier was chosen to be the architect of the center.[8] After an extensive conditional-use permit process,[4] construction by the Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company[9] began in August 1989.[10] The construction was significantly delayed, with the planned completion date moved from 1988 to 1995 (as of 1990).[11] By 1995, however, the campus was described as only "more than halfway complete".[4]
The center finally opened to the public on December 16, 1997.[2][12] Although the total project cost was estimated to be $350 million as of 1990,[11] it was later estimated to be $1.3 billion.[13]
After the center opened, the villa closed for extensive renovations and
reopened on January 28, 2006, to focus on the arts and cultures of
ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria.[14] Currently, the museum displays collections at both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades.
In 2005, after a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times about the spending practices of the Getty Trust and its then-president Dr. Barry Munitz,
the California Attorney General conducted an investigation of the Getty
Trust and found that no laws had been broken. The trust agreed to
appoint an outside monitor to review future expenditures.[15]
The Getty Trust experienced financial difficulties in 2008 and 2009 and
cut 205 of 1,487 budgeted staff positions to reduce expenses.[16][17] Although the Getty Trust endowment reached $6.4 billion in 2007, it dropped to $4.5 billion in 2009.[18]

Architecture

Cactus Garden perched on the south of the Getty Center, with West Los Angeles in the background

Meier has exploited the two naturally-occurring ridges (which diverge
at a 22.5 degree angle) by overlaying two grids along these axes. These
grids serve to define the space of the campus while dividing the import
of the buildings on it. Along one axis lie the galleries and along the
other axis lie the administrative buildings. Meier emphasized the two
competing grids by constructing strong view lines through the campus.
The main north-south axis starts with the helipad, then includes a
narrow walkway between the auditorium and north buildings, continues
past the elevator kiosk to the tram station, through the rotunda, past
the walls and support columns of the exhibitions pavilion, and finally
the ramp besides the west pavilion and the central garden. Its
corresponding east-west visual axis starts with the edge of the
scholar's wing of the Getty Research Institute
(GRI), the walkway between the central garden and the GRI, the overlook
to the azalea pool in the central garden, the walkway between the
central garden and the west pavilion, and finally the north wall of the
west pavilion and the courtyard between the south and east pavilions.
The main axes of the museum grid that is offset by 22.5 degrees
begins with the arrival plaza, carries through the edge of the stairs up
to the main entrance, aligns with the columns supporting the rotunda as
well as the center point of the rotunda, aligns with travertine benches
in the courtyard between the pavilions, includes a narrow walkway
between the west and south pavilions, a staircase down to the catus
garden and ends in the garden. The corresponding cross axis starts with
the center point of the circle forming the GRI library garden, then
passing to the center of the entrance rotunda, and aligning with the
south wall of the rotunda building. Although all of the museum is
aligned on these alternative axes, portions of the exhibitions pavilion
and the east pavilion are aligned on the true north-south axis as a
reminder that both grids are present in the campus.[19][20]
The primary grid structure is a 30-inch (760 mm) square; most wall
and floor elements are 30-inch (760 mm) squares or some derivative
thereof. The buildings at the Getty Center are made from concrete and steel with either travertine or aluminium cladding.[21] Around 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2) of travertine was used to build the center.[21]
Throughout the campus, numerous fountains provide white noise as a
background. The initial design has remained intact; however benches and
fences have been installed around the plaza fountains to discourage
visitors from wading into the pools. Some additional revisions have been
made in deference to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The fountain at the tram station.

The north promontory is anchored by a circular grass area, which serves as a heliport in case of emergencies, and the south promontory is anchored by a succulent plant and cactus
garden. The complex is also encircled by access roads that lead to
loading docks and staff parking garages on both the west and east sides
of the buildings. The hillside around the complex has been planted with
California Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) trees.
The museum has a seven-story deep underground parking garage with
over 1,200 parking spaces. Its roof has an outdoor sculpture garden.[22] An automated three-car, cable-pulled tram takes passengers between the parking garage at the bottom of the hill and the museum at the top of the hill.

Arrival court and central rotunda

A stairway leading down to the Central Garden

Visitors typically arrive at a tram station in the arrival plaza
located between the administrative buildings and the museum entrance. A
large set of steps leads to the main doors of the rotunda building. The
rotunda building houses information desks, two orientation theatres and
museum shops. It also holds a grand staircase that starts a path toward
the paintings located on the second floor of each art pavilion. The
rotunda opens to the south to a terrace that links all five of the
museum pavilions. A separate building to the west of the arrival plaza
and stairs holds a cafeteria and restaurant. Next to the restaurant is a
stone arch, which separates the museum from the GRI. Stairs from the
terrace connecting the GRI and the restaurant lead down to the central
garden.

Museum

The J. Paul Getty Museum's estimated 1.3 million visitors annually make it one of the most visited museums in the United States.[23] The collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum
on display at the Getty Center includes "pre-20th-century European
paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative
arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs".[3] The paintings include:

Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) by Paul Gauguin (1892). The Museum's director, Michael Brand, stated that the purchase of the painting was "one of the key moments in the history of our collection."[24] The literal translation of the Tahitian words of the title are "noble" and "sleeping eyes", which implies "death".[25]

Portrait of a Halberdier by Pontormo (1528–1530).[27]
When the museum bought the painting for $35.2 million at an auction in
1989, "the price more than tripled the previous record at auction for an
Old Master painting".[28]

A copy of Portrait of Louis XIV, which measures 114 x 62-5/8 inches, by the workshop of Hyacinthe Rigaud (after 1701).[29]

Getty's photograph collection is located on the lower level of the
west pavilion. It includes 35,000 individual prints, 1,500
daguerreotypes and other cased objects, 30,000 stereographs and
cartes-de-visite, and 475 albums containing almost 40,000 mounted
prints.[30]

The inner courtyard of the museum

The museum building consists of a three-level base building that is
closed to the public and provides staff workspace and storage areas.
Five public, two-story towers on the base are called the North, East,
South, West and the Exhibitions Pavilions. The Exhibitions Pavilion acts
as the temporary residence for traveling art collections and the
Foundation's artwork for which the permanent pavilions have no room. The
permanent collection is displayed throughout the other four pavilions
chronologically: the north houses the oldest art while the west houses
the newest.[31]
The first-floor galleries in each pavilion house light-sensitive art,
such as illuminated manuscripts, furniture, or photography.
Computer-controlled skylights on the second-floor galleries allow
paintings to be displayed in natural light. The second floors are
connected by a series of glass-enclosed bridges and open terraces, both
of which offer views of the surrounding hillsides and central plaza.
Sculpture is also on display at various points outside the buildings,
including on various terraces and balconies. The lower level (the
highest of the floors in the base) includes a public cafeteria, the
terrace cafe, and the photography galleries.[32]

Central Garden

The Central Garden as seen from the Museum

The 134,000-square-foot (12,400 m2) Central Garden at the Getty Center is the work of artist Robert Irwin.[33] Planning for the garden began in 1992, construction started in 1996, and the garden was completed in December 1997.[34]
Irwin was quoted as saying that the Central Garden "is a sculpture in the form of a garden, which aims to be art."[35] Water plays a major role in the garden. A fountain near the restaurant flows toward the garden and appears to fall into a grotto on the north garden wall. The resulting stream then flows down the hillside into the azalea
pool. The designers placed rocks and boulders of varying size in the
stream bed to vary the sounds from the flowing water. A tree-lined
stream descends to a plaza, while the walkway criss-crosses the stream,
which continues through the plaza, and goes over a stone waterfall into a
round pool.[33] A maze of azaleas floats in the pool, around which is a series of specialty gardens.[33]
More than 500 varieties of plant material are used for the Central
Garden, but the selection is "always changing, never twice the same".[33]
After the original design, an outdoor sculpture garden, called the
"Lower Terrace Garden" was added in 2007 on the west side of the central
garden just below the scholar's wing of the GRI building.[22][36]

Getty Research Institute (GRI)

The Getty Research Institute (GRI) is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts."[37]
Among other holdings, GRI's research library contains over 900,000
volumes of books, periodicals, and auction catalogs; special
collections; and two million photographs of art and architecture.[38] GRI's other activities include exhibitions, publications, and a residential scholars program.[37] At the Getty Center, GRI is located to the west of the museum.[21]
The round building encircles a landscaped garden and is located to the
west of the central garden. The main entrance of GRI is connected by a
terrace to the main arrival court of the museum, with outdoor sculptures
placed along the route.[22] GRI has one art gallery on its entrance level that is open to the public.

Other offices

The Getty Center, seen from a hill in Bel-Air. East Building, North Building and Auditorium are closest to camera.

Meier also designed three other buildings located next to the north
promontory and offset at a 22.5 degree angle from the main axis of the
museum pavilions. The north-most building is an auditorium. Next to it
is the North Building, with the East Building sitting between the North
Building and the rotunda. The main entrance to the East Building is
flanked by two round silos that hold its elevators. A bridge over a
sunken courtyard links the main entrance of the East Building to the
main walkway that connects the auditorium and North Buildings to the
rotunda. These buildings house the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI),
the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Getty Foundation. These buildings are
generally closed to the public except for special events held in the
auditorium.[21]
They are linked to the museum both by landscaped terraces and by an
enclosed glass walkway that leads from the main rotunda of the museum.

GCI, which is headquartered at the Getty Center but also has facilities at the Getty Villa, commenced operation in 1985.[39]
It "serves the conservation community through scientific research,
education and training, model field projects, and the dissemination of
the results of both its own work and the work of others in the field"
and "adheres to the principles that guide the work of the Getty Trust:
service, philanthropy, teaching, and access".[39] GCI has activities in both art conservation and architectural conservation.[40]
The Getty Foundation awards grants for "the understanding and preservation of the visual arts".[41] In addition, it runs the Getty Leadership Institute for "current and future museum leaders".[42] Its offices are north of the museum.[21]
The foundation offices are located in the two administrative buildings
that are north of the museum. The J. Paul Getty Trust, which oversees
the Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Foundation, Getty Research
Institute, and J. Paul Getty Museum, also has offices there.[21]

Preparation for natural disasters

Earthquakes

Looking north from main entrance toward arrival plaza.

Although the center's site was thought to have little motion during
earthquakes, which are frequent in the Los Angeles area, in 1994, as the
center was being constructed, the Northridge earthquake struck.[43] It caused "disturbing hairline cracks... in the welds and plated joints of the steel framework."[44] As a result, the steelwork through the site was retrofitted.[44] The Center's buildings are thought to be able to survive an earthquake of 7.5 magnitude on the Richter scale.[43]

Fires

In the 16 electrical transformers at the center, silicone fluid is used as a coolant "with less risk of ignition" than hydrocarbon coolant.[45] The native flammable chaparral was removed and fire-resistant poverty weed was added to the slopes around the center.[44] Each year, a herd of goats is rented to clear brush on the surrounding hills.[46]
At the north end of the center, a tank with 1,000,000 USgal
(3,800,000 l) of water, together with a grass-covered helipad, allow
helicopters to collect water.[47][48] The access ramp from the entry plaza to the museum was constructed to allow a fire truck to pass over it.[44]
Inside the museum, the sprinkler system is designed to balance "between
the potential damage of a fire and the risk of water damage to valuable
artwork".[49]

Panoramic view looking south

A near 180-degree panoramic view of Los Angeles looking south from the Getty on an exceptionally clear day. The 405 freeway intersects the view